Saturday, June 01, 2013

Parade promotes queer youth

Never has so much been at stake for the gay and lesbian community as it prepares to mark Sunday's 39th annual Santa Cruz Pride Parade and Festival. ...

"We are inviting everyone to stand with us as we await the decision of the Supreme Court and we are calling on our allies on the Supreme Court to uphold equality," she said. "It is certainly a seminal moment for our community and feels like a great time to gather and be together." ...

The organization reached new heights in recent years, bringing the awards program to Scotts Valley and San Lorenzo Valley schools and working on a new program designed to support transgender youth.

Rosenstein said he draws inspiration from the families who love their LGBT children unconditionally.

"It's humbling to work with parents who stand proud to support their children," he said. ...

Kathy Goldenkranz, president of Boys and Girls Club and founder of Out in Our Faith

Stuart Rosenstein, chair of the Queer Youth Task Force

Other Pride Festival honorees:

Jim Brown, former executive director of the Diversity Center

Mark Hajduk, member of Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee (BAYMEC)

Santa Cruz Parents Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)

Santa Cruz City Schools

I am surprised at how much emphasis is on how much of this event is based on gay and lesbian outreach to children. They have the schools, boys and girls club, queer youth, transgender youth, LGBT children, etc. all lined up for this parade.

The court doesn't let me see my kids because I once reset an alarm clock and took them to a math contest, but when a bunch of local weirdos want to promote LGBTQIA behavior in children, the city has a parade.

They are excited that the US Supreme Court in going to rule on California's Prop. 8, but that will not have any direct practical on the rights and obligations of California couples. What they desperately want, of course, is for the justices to declare that LGBTQIA relationships have "equality" with all others.

For a long time, gay rights was about the private behavior of consenting adults. No more. Now it is all about recruiting kids for the next generation of activists.

In a recent cover story in The Atlantic, “The Gay Guide to Wedded Bliss,” Liza Mundy discusses how same-sex unions are happier than heterosexual marriages. Her studies show that gay and lesbian couples, whether intentional or not, are more in sync than straight couples across many areas. For example, chores.

“Study after study has shown that these unions tend to be more egalitarian,” Mundy said on Take Two Thursday. “There's still a fair amount of traditional division of labor in straight households, whereas gay couples start with a blank slate, and have to negotiate every duty.”

Mundy mentions how in male-female couples’ household duties, the wife tends to clean the bathroom while the husband traditionally takes out the trash. In same-sex unions, however, each couple divvies up chores more based on their strengths rather than gender roles.

This same logic applies to an issue oft-debated in marriages: parenting. While the woman is generally assumed to play the major role in child care in many couples (though men are taking the role more and more), Mundy says that taking gender out of the equation can lead to a better parenting dynamic.

“When it comes to parenting, for example, in gay couples, both parents tend to be present more at the same time,” Mundy said on raising children. “They’re co-parenting… together.”

Mundy’s study showed that in contrast, straight couples being around children together were more likely to have the mother interacting by herself with the kids, with the father “off on his Blackberry or playing with Tinker Toys by himself.”

A word I think of in this connection is an old bit of psychiatric jargon that went out of polite use a few decades ago. Today the word “invert” is scarcely ever heard at all. Not so long ago, however, it was was not only reputable but clinically descriptive. In those days homosexuality was often regarded not merely as a sexual disorder or perversion, like impotence or exhibitionism, but as a comprehensive personality disorder. That is, homosexuality was not just a thing unto itself: it was a marker of a disturbed and possibly antisocial or even dangerous character.

The invert’s sexuality was an expression of a deep tangle of neuroses. He was thus quite a sick person, unfit for military service or positions of social responsibility. Socially, the invert was likely to be backward and poorly adjusted; psychologically he was not only unhappy but the very antithesis of normalcy. Thus was his personality almost literally upside-down. Now, the dusty museum-case is a good resting place for “invert,” and I would hate to see it creep back into general use. But I cannot deny that in some respects it is a good word to describe what I was for 25 years.

This guy also writes about being an introvert. Not sure if he was born that way. Invert or not, he would be normal in Santa Cruz.

1 comment:

The other day my 5 year old asked me if it is true that boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls. I asked her where she heard that, and she replied it was from a classmate in kindergarten.

My response was simply to set the record straight - yes, in some places they can BUT it still takes a mommy and a daddy to make a baby (even in IVF)

What is troubling these days about the political and ideological landscape surrounding family issues in the United States is that we've been at war against traditional families and values for the past 40 years. Progressives have crossed over from lobbying for social equality to the extreme of ideologically-based social engineering.